1. Field
Aspects of the present invention generally relates to a printing system, a control method thereof, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Reducing power consumption of printing devices such as digital multi-function processing machines which perform image forming processing has been strongly demanded. To satisfy the demand, the digital multi-function processing machines in recent years have been mounted with various types of low power consumption functions. As one of the low power consumption functions, an automatic sleep function is adopted. After the digital multi-function processing machine has finished a job such as printing, when the job is not performed for a predetermined time, the digital multi-function processing machine automatically shifts to a sleep mode to reduce the power consumption. In the sleep mode, in addition to stopping a toner fixing heater and energization of an engine motor, the digital multi-function processing machine stops a central processing unit (CPU) for controlling the machine to reduce the power consumption. Another power saving function is an automatic shut-down function. Similarly to the automatic sleep function, the automatic shut-down function automatically turns off the power source when a predetermined time elapses after the job has been finished. With this function, the power consumption can become almost zero.
As a conventional technique, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-157530 discusses a control method for stopping sheet discharging action when it is detected that a sheet discharge port is fully loaded with discharged print sheets. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-157530 discusses that, in a device for reading a paper document as electronic information by a scanner, when it is detected that the discharged sheets that have been scanned are fully loaded, and when a finishing process is selected, the sheet discharging action is finished. Further, when waiting is selected as the processing method, the device is controlled to be set to a waiting state and wait for release of a fully loaded state of the sheet discharge port. In the waiting state, when an image reading device is in an energy saving mode, a driving unit of the image reading device can be stopped.
However, according to the conventional technique, the power saving function such as the automatic sleep function and the automatic shut-down function shifts to a power saving mode after a previously set time elapses. Thus, even when the print sheets being fully mounted is detected and the print action cannot be performed, until the set time elapses, the device cannot shift to a low power consumption state. Therefore, even when the printing device cannot be used, an unnecessary power is consumed. Further, according to the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-157530, even though fully loaded discharged sheets are detected and thus the driving unit is stopped, since the energization is continued through units other than the driving unit, the unnecessary power is consumed more than in the low power consumption state.